“We all think of the Hemingway persona, but what the CTE did, later in life, was it simply solidified and locked in the very worst aspects of that persona. One effect is to make a person less able to tolerate alcohol, which also figures in Hemingway’s various diagnoses. But Farah sees his alcoholism as a part of a the larger puzzle, a secondary consideration rather than the primary problem. Another theory was hemochromatosis — an excess accumulation of iron — and doctors even considered a liver biopsy to be sure, but Hemingway’s normal blood iron levels argued strongly against it. Hemingway’s brain was never imaged, and his suicide physically destroyed it, preventing anything like the posthumous studies that were done on Einstein’s brain, for example.

Source: National Post April 28, 2017 17:20 UTC